NATO Agrees to a Third Operation in the Balkans ; Yesterday, NATO Leaders Began to Dispatch 3,500 Troops to Macedonia to Disarm Rebels

Article excerpt

Twice in the past six years NATO has sent Western troops into the
former Yugoslavia on open-ended missions to restore peace between
ethnic factions.

And as NATO leaders agreed yesterday to dispatch a third Balkan
mission - to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia - many
observers doubted whether the 30-day deployment would be enough to
defuse the volatile situation that is threatening to descend into
all-out war.

"There is a big mismatch between what needs to be done and the
resources NATO has set aside to do it," says Nadege Ragaru, a
Balkans expert with the Paris-based Institute for International and
Strategic Relations. "The deployment is not realistic."

NATO hopes that this time, by acting speedily, it can limit its
engagement in Macedonia. Whereas in Bosnia, Western forces
intervened only after years of inter-ethnic fighting, and in Kosovo
they actually took part in the conflict, the Macedonian operation
is designed to forestall a war.

On the face of it, Operation Essential Harvest is a simple
mission. A 3,500-man task force, made up largely of British,
French, and Czech troops, will spend a month collecting the weapons
that the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) willingly
gives up.

Giving up arms

NLA leader Ali Ahmeti has pledged that his men will disarm, as
part of a deal between ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian
political leaders last week - brokered by US and European mediators
- that gives the Albanian minority greater political and social
rights.

But in the current atmosphere of ethnic mistrust, nobody expects
the NLA to give up all its weapons, and arguments have already
started over how many guns the rebels possess and how many they
should hand over.

Rebel leaders say their men have around 2,500 small arms. The
Macedonian Interior Ministry said yesterday the figure was closer to
60,000.

In reality, suggests Nicholas Whyte, a Balkans analyst with the
Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, "disarmament is
of purely symbolic importance - it just indicates the guerrillas'
willingness to take the political process seriously. …